


Alone

by unsureAuthor



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Coming of Age, Saddishstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-15 17:03:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsureAuthor/pseuds/unsureAuthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You think your name might be Dirk, but it’s been so long since you heard your name said aloud that it’s almost slipped your mind entirely.</p>
<p>Beta Reader:<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouslykatie/pseuds/curiouslykatie">curiouslykatie</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wild Child Full of Pain

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic I am writing from Dirk's point of view as he grows up! It starts at about the age of five or so, continuing on through the years. It will be kinda sad, but maybe also kinda nice? Who knows, it is a mystery.
> 
> Heads up to my lovely beta reader [curiouslykatie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouslykatie/pseuds/curiouslykatie). You should totally check her out!

 

You think your name might be Dirk, but it’s been so long since you heard your name said aloud that it’s almost slipped your mind entirely. The metal man in the corner used to call you by your name, but he stopped moving a long time ago. When he stopped moving, he stopped making you food, so you had to make do on your own. You’re a small kid; your eyes barely come up to the counters where all the cans of vegetables live. The vegetables are really gross and you hate them but you have to eat something. Your favorite thing is the bottles of orange fizz, it’s sweet and tangy and most nights you drink too many of them and have to lay down, your belly stretched and aching.

Outside of your windows, the ocean is roaring. You’re too short to peer out the windows, so you bring over a box to kneel on. The ocean is big, lots of water that wiggles around. There are huge white things in the water sometimes. You used to think they were people like you, but you’re starting to wonder if maybe they’re something different. They never come to talk to you like the metal man did, and their bodies are different from yours. Some of them have one broad, flat leg that smashes the ocean; some look prickly and have thin arms that flail in the water. They don’t look like the metal man, and they don’t look like your brother.

Speaking of your brother, he’s calling you from the other room. You jump down off the box and slowly walk to your bedroom. You like to walk slow, because you remember the time you fell and hit your head and metal man fixed you with stickers and stinging cream. You don’t know what you’ll do if you hit your head and metal man’s still asleep. The slow, measured steps take you to your room, where your brother is sitting on the bed. He has a big smile. He’s always happy to see you. You curl up against him and let him talk to you. It’s a lot of nonsense but that’s okay because you like to talk silly words too. Metal man wanted to teach you how to talk like him, but it was boring so you would hide in the space under the house when he tried.

Brother stops talking for a second because you both can hear a loud noise outside the house. If it’s just crashing clouds, you’re safe… But if it’s the big monsters, then you’re going to have to hide.

You can hear a heavy grinding noise, the room shakes, metal begins sliding down over the windows and you know it’s the monsters. They fly past the house, rumbling low and loud, their heads crowned with six sharp points. A weak little whimper escapes your mouth and suddenly you and Brother are running- who cares if you fall- to the hidey-hole you made for yourselves. Now you’re there, hiding under your old clothes and all these colorful hats and you’re shaking.

The noises get louder and louder and you realize you’re crying and Brother wipes your tears away. The monsters are the scariest thing you’ve ever seen, and you’re glad that the windows shut when they come by. One day they didn’t. One day you saw what they looked liked and you almost screamed because you were so scared.

The noises are going away now. It’s a really long time before the windows open again, and now it’s almost dark outside. Rising from your hiding spot, you feel worried and afraid. Deep down, the fear makes you angry. So you pull your brother up onto the couch and stare out the window. The ocean booms and calls to you, so you call back. Your voice rips from you, loud and crazy. The ocean crashes and you shout right back, trying to drown out the world with your wordless cries. You are a wild child, full of pain and crying and noise noise noise. Brother and you jump around the room, shouting and calling and screaming at the ocean. You don’t realize it, but you just want to be heard. You want someone to hear you and come for you. You want someone to fix metal man and make good food and help you every day and you don’t know what’s missing but something is and you want it so bad.

Once the screaming is over, Brother says he’s hungry so you go under the counters and pull out the cans. They have little pictures on the outside that never really match the inside, and that’s just one more thing to shout about. There’s a little machine on the counter that you snap the cans into, and then they open up and you can eat what’s inside. As the can spins on the machine, you watch it and hum along. It makes soft noises and it whirrs until the can is open and then it makes a clanking noise. The machine is another friend, it’s like metal man but quieter. Pulling the can from the machine, you whisper something soft, a nonsense word that feels like thanks. Metal man liked it when you said thanks.

Sitting on the floor, you use your fingers to pull out the little orange circles. You like these the best, and after all that screaming you want to just stare at the color and lick the liquid off your fingers. All of the cans taste kind of the same, but the orange circles are mushy and prettier than the rest. Your least favorite is the can of little stony looking foods. They’re softer than stones, and pale white, and when you chew them they feel pasty in your mouth.

Some of the juice dribbles down your chin onto your chest. You ask Brother to get you a shirt to wipe off with, but he’s lazy and says no. Angrily you rise from the floor and stalk to the room. The shirts are in the hidey-hole pile. After you’re all wiped up, you toss the shirt back with the others. Metal man said that shirts were for the body but you got confused with the sleeves and stopped wearing them after a while. You still wear your shorts though, because they’re fun to put on and they keep you warm. Brother wears the same shirt all the time, and sometimes you toss him in the tub when he gets smelly but he never takes off the shirt.

The window tells you that it’s dark outside, and the stars come out and you stare at them as you chew the circles. Sometimes you pretend that the stars are all like you, sitting in their houses and eating their cans and looking right back. It’s a silly story and you’re starting to think that it’s a little dumb too. Lately you’ve been feeling different. When metal man stopped you were happy at first because it meant you got to do whatever you wanted. You got to drink more than one fizz a day and wear whatever you wanted and you never had to talk.

Now you kind of miss metal man, because he paid attention to you more than Brother ever does. Plus, you’re starting to wish you had listened to him when he talked. If the stars are kids like you, you bet they know words and what to call things and if you ever meet them you won’t be able to know what they’re saying. Your fingers have found the bottom of the can, so you tip it back and drink all the juice that’s left. It tastes bad, like metal, but you do it anyway and then stack it with the others by the couch. There are a lot of cans now. Metal man used to take them away, but now he’s always asleep.

You find the little plastic box and press the big red button. The tellfish comes on. It’s another machine but you kind of remember the name it had when metal man still spoke. Metal man knew how to make it show pictures and people and sounds, but you don’t know how so all it does is turn blue. There’s a number in the corner, but you forgot all the numbers so you can’t call its name. You grab a blanket from the blanket fort in your room and curl up in it right in front of the tellfish. The tellfish glows blue and staring at all that blue blue blue makes you really sleepy and you start to nod off. Brother’s in the kitchen asking if he can sleep with you too but you’re too tired to go pick him up. You really wish Brother could walk on his own because you’re tired of lugging him around.

You finally drift off to sleep and you dream that metal man is awake and Brother can move by himself and there’s a person for you who talks and laughs and smiles and calls you ‘Dirk’ like it’s the happiest thing he’s ever said.

 


	2. Found Album

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I plan on reworking this chapter later, but I really wanted to post it so O3O

Your name is Dirk and you like to read. You found books in the crawlspace and you look at the pictures and try your best to make the words on the page make sense. You’re older now, and you can see above the counters really easy. Sometimes you just rest your chin on the counter and let the cool surface soothe you. You remember being little and sad all the time. You’re still sad.

The metal man in the corner is still asleep, and sometimes you feel brave enough to touch him and try to wake him up. He never does, though. But sometimes you think you don’t need him anymore because you’re learning new things all the time. You figured out how to make the television turn on right, and you watch the shows that come on and they help you learn to read. The shows are really weird, and they all have these weird people in them. The people are grey and they have sharp teeth and big hard bones that stick out of their heads. You wonder if you’re a freak, if you are supposed to look like these people.

Is that why you’re alone here? Because you were born pale, born with nubby teeth and no bones sticking out anywhere? It’s scary to think about so you try really hard not to.

One of the shows ends and you watch the strange symbols go up the screen super fast. You only learn how to read because at the bottom, when people talk in their crazy sounds, there are letters and you use the letters to match the sounds and next thing you know the pictures in the books match the words on the page. You struggle through your first book, ‘Cat in the Hat’, and afterwards you’re so happy you give a little shout. You don’t shout very much anymore, and honestly you hate when it gets too loud from the storms and the ocean. With pride, you take the book to metal man and sit Lil’ Cal next to you as you tell metal man everything the book told you.

Lil’ Cal is still your best friend, but one of your books was about family and it says brothers are boys who come from the same mom and dad. You are pretty sure that Cal did not come from a mom and dad, that he was made from soft cloth and was never a baby like you. So you guys aren’t brothers anymore, and you started calling him Cal instead. Lil’ Cal talks a bit less, and he’s more like a voice in your head that you talk to when you’re really lonely.

One day you are digging through the room where all the books are and you find a big black book. You open it and a surprised noise slips out of you. The pages are slick and full of pictures. The pictures slide out of the pages, though, not like with the other books. You slip a picture out and hold it in your hands, studying it. It’s of a man, a man with white hair like you and no head bones. He’s not pale like you. His skin is more like orange, your favorite color. Your fingers are shaking as you touch the picture. He’s wearing black glasses, big round ones. You wonder if his eyes are orange just like yours? As you flip through the book you try to find a picture with his eyes but there are none. There are pictures of places and people and crazy things you’ve never even imagined before. In one of the pictures, the man is standing next to a woman, and they are holding hands. The woman also has pale hair, but her skin is white like yours. She has bright purple eyes and an odd smile. It looks like she is smiling at you, like she knows you can see her right now.

You pick out your favorite pictures and take them back to your room, sticking them to your wall with little pokeys you found in your desk. You take the picture with the lady and flip it around, so that the back of the picture faces outward. You like her, she’s pretty, but you don’t want to see her little smile all the time. You set the first picture you saw on the table by your bed, and before you go to sleep you touch the man’s face, smiling. You decide that he’s your brother, and that the lady is your mom and that you’re all a big family together.

That night you dream that your brother is fixing up Lil’ Cal’s rips and waking up metal man and that your mom is sitting at the table, smiling her knowing smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> your comments and attention sustain me ~~~


	3. Boredom

Your name is Dirk Strider and you’re sick to death of the house you live in. The furniture, the television, the windows, even the books. You’ve read all of your books over and over. You know them by heart now. You even read ‘Complacency of the Learned’, which was long and kind of boring. You only read it because it was by Rose, the woman you like to pretend is your mother.

Her name doesn’t mix with yours right, though. Dave’s name does; Dave Strider, he’s your brother and he’s the one who left you the pictures and books and food. You know this because of the letters. He left you lots of them, and they’re the best thing, even better than books and teevee. His handwriting is kind of sloppy, and he doesn’t use big letters like your books do.

His letters are amazing, full of stories about two dumb guys who are always getting into messes, and parts of Dave’s life you never got to see. He writes about how much he misses you, even though you’ve never met. When you read those parts, you catch yourself whispering it right back to the paper, as if he could hear you somehow.

You hid the letters after that.

Some days you get so bored that you go outside. For the longest time you were afraid to go out there, afraid of the drones and the big creatures of the water. Now you’re not so scared. You learned to climb the metal beams of your home and get into the water. It took some time but eventually you learnt to swim like a fish, fast and deep. Under the water you can’t see very well, but deep down below you make out shapes. It looks like a sunken city. You wish that you had enough breath in your lungs to go all the way down there. Whenever you finish swimming you laze about on the roof and idly imagine there’s a whole race of people down there that swim and talk and play and laugh. You know that’s just fake stuff, though. Even though you know it’s all pretend, you spend time writing stories, making up friends who live in the ocean and come up to the surface just for you. After you finished the first one you cried just a little. You cry a lot less now.

When writing and swimming and reading are not enough, you find yourself tortured with boredom... But it all changes when you go under the crawl space. You remember hiding there from Sawtooth when you were little, back when he felt like more than just some freaky metal stature in the corner. (You wonder if you imagined him taking care of you, because he’s certainly doing a poor job if that’s what he’s supposed to be up to.) At first you feel silly, jamming yourself into the tiny area beneath your floor, but then you see it: a box, one that is full of weird and new things.

The box has your name on it in big blocky letters, ‘DIRK STRIDER’. You open it eagerly and puzzle at what’s inside. It’s full of wires and metal things, and to one side there is just a soft case. You unzip the case and look at the discs inside. Some of them say ‘DVD’ on them, and those letters match with the boxy machine that sits in front of the TV. You never tried using it before, but you know there’s a slot on the front and you wonder if these go inside. There are pamphlets and books and tools and it’s like your whole world has turned upside down.

After a bit of work you turn on the DVD machine and pop in the first disc. A voice you’ve never heard fills the room. There’s no one on screen, just the words ‘Circuits for Beginners’, but you pretend that it’s Dave’s voice. Dave guides you through how to connect wires and put on little bits of plastic and metal called fuses and capacitors and resistors and you don’t even understand what’s going on. But you watch it over and over

That night you dream that you’re under the water, swimming down and down with that gentle voice in your head as you touch the bottom of the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really like the way this chapter came out, but I wasn't sure how to make it better! Also, the tense changes are really jarring and I apologize for that! Hopefully the next one will be more fun.
> 
> -3- And kisses to everyone who comments on this story, you guys are my inspiration!


	4. Not So Patient

Your name is Dirk Strider, and boredom is a thing of the past. After a few plays of the DVD, you tried making circuits on your own. There were guide books on how to do it, and you used the wires and small resistors on a little board of holes called a breadboard. It took you quite a few tries, but you managed to put together a small noise maker with the speaker parts. You flipped it on and off a few times, the high pitch whine irritating but exciting. You made something.

You wonder what else you can make.

You wonder what the limits are. There have always been limits; to the places you can go, the things you eat, even the way you dress.

Only a week ago you stumbled across the box of reserve clothing, and for the first time in almost five years you wear all the 'necessary' pieces of an outfit. Not that anyone is around to comment on your budding fashion sense.

The box you found in the crawlspace had one more surprise, something you don’t get yet but you think you will one day. It’s a long string of letters and numbers, symbols that are foreign to you. Above it, in those warm and comforting block letters, it says ‘DOWNLOAD PESTERCHUM LINK’. You spend a lot of time tracing the letters, copying them over and over until your handwriting is forever altered. Now you can write like him, and while it's a tenuous link, it's one nontheless.

The dictionary teaches you the words download (to transfer from a usually large computer to the memory of another device) and link (an identifier attached to a system in order to permit connection between similarly identified elements), but not Pesterchum. You put it aside. Patience is truly a virtue.

The dictionary, however, is almost never put aside. You’ve undertaken the arduous (hard to accomplish or achieve) task of reading the damned thing, and if you’re not wrist deep in wires and circuitry, you’re stumbling through the massive book. So many words, many of which don't even relate to the tiny world you've grown up inside. This cage. Prison.

You'll have to work on patience.

Time passes slowly, and yet all at once. Before you know it, you are building little moving machines and complex circuits. Your mind fills with complex words and their wonderful definitions. When you get tired of building, which is almost never, you watch the stupid movies in the DVD case. The men in the movies are the ones from Dave’s letters. They are funny, in a strange kind of way that you can’t wrap your head around. Really, you only watch them to see that line at the end, the line that fills your heart with pride.

Directed by Dave Strider.

He made these, so long ago before you even existed, and he left them like a present for you. The special features on the disc actually have him talking, looking at the camera through his shades and laughing and being so alive. His voice is not the voice on your circuit DVDs, but it’s a good one all the same. In the bathroom mirror you thrill over the little similarities between your faces. Deep in your heart you hope you will look exactly the same, once your face has lengthened and filled. At night beneath your covers, you imagine having his voice, deep and comforting.

That voice is in your head the day you pry open Sawtooth and take a look around. He is much more complex than you anticipated, and you realize this project will be quite the undertaking. Struggling to quench the frustration in your heart, you shut his chest cavity and shudder with deepening breaths. There is nothing like him in your basic circuitry books. There has to be a better way to access the information you require.

Sawtooth is just the challenge a young boy needs.

And you sleep and dream of stairs and circuits and Dave’s voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh it took me so long to post this even though I had 90% of this finished! I hope it's ok~


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